Thing one: Trying to write about what happened yesterday or lately with any insight is really, really hard even though you KNOW what happened. Thing two: Trying to predict the future with its many moving parts is just plain crazy. I'm sticking with thing one and predict that in the future, I'll still be doing that.
- Jean Bolduc, Freelance Reporter (Chapel Hill News|News & Observer), Frequent Humorist, Happily married since forever, Renowned Philosopher (Mother of two).

Monday, May 16, 2005

It's a twister (it's the news)

Thankfully, the news landscape has been free of the wild speculation about the release of the results of the Shiavo autopsy. The medical examiner handling the case says it will be a few more weeks before he releases his report -- sure to be a bestseller.

We have a runaway bride to obsess over, a runaway plane trickling into restricted Washington D.C. airspace and then there's Dave Chappelle, the comic whose standup success caused him to freak out, stand up and run away to South Africa. Time magazine was so skeptical of Chappelle's disappearing act, they sent a crew to take pictures of him on the continent. He had to get away (from his $50 million contract) because , he says, he was worried when he saw a white member of his crew laughing. Maybe his comedy was "making the wrong people laugh," he said.

Maybe it's making the wrong guy rich.

Meanwhile, in case it matters, there's Iraq. My son's girlfriend called this evening. She had a question -- how to do a search online to find our whether or not her high school friend Joel, now a 2nd Lt. in the 11th Infantry, has been injured or killed. He's not answering her emails, she said, and his unit has been his be a car bomb once already. They sent him back in for more.

We talked about that -- about where to look. We found an informative site, a disturbing one. The domain says it all -- icasualties.org. It compiles the data released daily by the government into a searchable database.

It's not a government site, it is a private site. A quiet patriotic act.